I Want To Be A "Weird Rich Aunt" And Here Is What I Mean By That
I've been wanting to be 55 years old since my senior year in college.
I’m so glad you’re here! I’m Sarah Von Bargen, a long-time online writer, marketing consultant, and coach. Every week we’ll be exploring ideas around spending our time, money, and energy on purpose + how to build a life we love that doesn’t make us broke or exhausted.
I’ve wanted to be 55 years old since I was 22.
Hand to God, if you asked my college boyfriend or roommate, they could tell you about this dream of mine.
Since my senior year in college, I’ve had an extremely specific fantasy.
In this fantasy, I have an expensive, blunt bob. I’m wearing a matching linen set with chunky bangles and oversized sunglasses. I have two rescue greyhounds with clever matching names (Bonnie and Clyde? Franny and Zooey? Bill and Ted?) I drive a vintage jaguar.
Over the years, this fantasy has evolved into what I call Weird Rich Aunt and for quite a while I thought of it only in terms of aesthetic or lifestyle.
A Weird Rich Aunt has a smoking jacket and a signature, hard-to-find perfume. Her clothing is fascinating and well-made. She eats her meals on The Good China.
But as I get closer to the age where (at least in my mind) I can achieve my final form as Weird Rich Aunt, I started to think about the other, deeper aspects of a WRA.
Where did she buy that smoking jacket?
Does she tailor those fascinating clothes herself?
Does it bother her that people think her favorite perfume smells like “fancy dirt”?
Is she actually, factually wealthy? Or does she just, like, seem wealthy?
And because I do believe that you have to “name it to claim it,” I put myself through the thought exercise of defining what a Weird Rich Aunt truly is. Because I can’t become one if I haven’t identified her qualities, right?
A Weird Rich Aunt May Or May Not Actually Be “Rich”
Now, WRA isn’t actively worried about money. She has enough money to do all the things she wants to do: buy bottles of her obscure signature perfume, stay stocked up on Manchego and forbidden rice, book a last minute flight to Ottawa to ice skate on the Rideau Canal.
But WRA doesn’t necessarily have 4 million dollars in the bank or live in a waterside mansion. She might live in an impeccably decorated studio apartment in an historic building in Miami or a perfectly restored craftsman bungalow in South Minneapolis. She might drive a BMW … that’s 25 years old.
WRA has freedom, though. Freedom to buy things she loves, to take a vacation when her neighbors do a noisy home project, or to hire cleaners before she hosts her famous May Day party.
A Weird Rich Aunt Is Generous - In Whatever Form That Takes
WRA knows generosity comes in many forms. Maybe she writes her local library a check that helps them meet their end-of-year fundraising goal. When you’re in the hospital, she swings by with $150 worth of your favorite sushi. When your daughter is trying to get into that competitive MFA program, she makes a call to the chair of the department. (They dated ages ago and he owes her a favor.)
When you need someone to read the first draft of your novel, she’ll read it and write insightful comments in the margin with her fountain pen. While she won’t help you move, she will come over and drink martinis and keep you company while you go through everything in your closet.
And then she’ll drop everything you don’t want at the thrift store on her way home because she knows those bags will sit in your trunk for eight months.
A Weird Rich Aunt Is Incredibly Intentional About The People, Things, And Ideas She Fills Her Life With
The things in WRA’s life? They didn’t end up there by accident. Or rather, maybe she found that armchair on the side of the road or she met that friend in the bathroom at a Chappel Roan show in early 2023, but she made a very active decision to keep them.
WRA doesn’t just buy things from the sale end cap at Target because they were cheap or stay friends with that person from two jobs ago out of habit. She doesn’t blindly accept that a woman needs to dye her hair when she goes grey or that adults shouldn’t have roommates or she needs to buy new jeans every time the trends change.
Everything in WRA’s home is there on purpose; it has a story, it’s well made and functional. She adores the people that are in her life and her mind is a good, safe space to be, filled with thoughts and ideas that support the life she wants for herself.
A Weird Rich Aunt Is The Hero + Main Character Of Her Own Story
WRA might be partnered up. She might have kids. She might have a traditional 9-to-5 office job.
But WRA does not define herself exclusively through her relationship to any of these things.
When you ask her what she’s been up to, yes, she might mention her kid’s school play or a big project at work. But more often, she’ll tell you about a new hobby she’s obsessed with - glass blowing or making tofu from scratch or training her neighborhood crows to bring her things. She’s training to hike the PTC or planning a trip with her college friends to Chile.
Sure, she loves her family and her job but she is more than any of these. She understands that each of these identities - wife, mom, job title - is finite and the most important relationship is the one she has with herself.
(Not everyone in WRA’s life will appreciate this mindset, but the good news is: She doesn’t care whether they like it or not!!)
A Weird Rich Aunt Knows Things
Need a lock picked? WRA knows how to do that. She can drive a manual, haggle prices in a second language, make a cheese souffle, and tile a backsplash. When you come to her for advice, she’ll give you a no-bullshit answer that all your friends were too polite to give you.
She reads great books you’ve never heard of and she watched all the movies up for best foreign film. She knows how to do most things and if she doesn’t, she’s happy to watch a few Youtube videos and figure it out.
A Weird Rich Aunt Is The Cutest Version Of Herself Without Totally Bowing To Societal Beauty Norms
Though she was tempted, WRA never changed the nose she shares with 5 generations of her family. She’s decided that 7,000 steps a day and the occasional yoga class are “good enough” she’ll just let her body do what it wants to do. WRA has made peace with that stripe of grey in her hair and is even slooooowly starting to embrace it.
She does, of course, love her lotions and potions and sitting at her Hollywood-style vanity in a silk robe she bought on her way through Hong Kong. But she wants to look like the best version of herself, not an AI generated image of Western beauty standards.
A Weird Rich Aunt Is Deeply, Deeply Herself
WRA knows who she is and who she’s not. And while she’s happy to work on herself and rein in traits that offend or hurt others, she’s also very much who she is.
If you invite her to do something she doesn’t like, she’ll politely turn you down but invite you to do something else. If you make a joke she finds offensive or distasteful, she’ll tell you so. If you make a reference she doesn’t get, she’ll tell you she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t dampen her loud laugh or her love of puns. If you tell her she’s too much, she’ll tell you to go find less.
Now, to be clear, I’m not a Weird Rich Aunt … yet. Not age-wise, money-wise, or character-wise.
But as I get closer to the age when women become societally invisible, it feels empowering and exciting to lean into this potential version of myself - weird and rich and full of life.
My personal list of Weird Rich Aunts
Mrs. Basil E. from Dash & Lily
Jane Fonda
Lily Tomlin
Cher
While I don’t know if they’re weird enough to be Weird Rich Aunts, I would argue that Martha Stewart and Ina Garten are WRA-adjecent.
What about you? Do you have a vision for your life in your 50s? What other character traits would you assign to a Weird Rich Aunt? And who are your favorite WRAs?
My style goal previously was a combination of Miss Frizzle and Lucille Ball. Now I think that’s evolving a bit, which is a cool thing to explore.
YES! I have been saying for years that I'm in my Auntie Mame era. I'm filling my apartment with highly curated and weird art that makes me happy, building a fantastic analog music collection, finding unique well-mad secondhand clothing, and learning all the things I was curious about as a kid but stopped pursuing because I Can't Monetize It So Why Bother. I'm child-free but I am an auntie, and I love building the mystique of my life and increasingly perplexing my family.